This notice board has now been replaced. It was in place until May 2007.
At a meeting of Sheffield Wildlife Trust held on 7th June 2007 representatives of the wildlife trust admitted that Blacka Moor is no more an official nature reserve than anyone's front garden or the grass verge at the side of the road.
Some of us have suspected this for some time but this is now confirmed. Anyone can call any patch of land a nature reserve but this is meaningless without proper confirmation by Natural England as a Local Nature Reserve. And this is only obtained after certain procedures are gone through.
There are numerous proper nature reserves in Sheffield but Blacka is not one despite the signs at entrances.
Click here for the list of nature reserves on Sheffield City Council website, recently updated. Click here for the list of genuine nature reserves in South Yorkshire on Natural England's website. Why is this important?
Because Blacka already has a much more important designation - as a Public Open Space - with important precedence for recreation. The nature reserve signs are there purely to create an impression on the public and have no authority at all.
The new notice board. Still no mention of the important Public Open Space designation and still claiming to be a nature reserve.
Blacka was given to the public by Alderman Graves in 1933. He went to the trouble to have the place legally designated as a Public Open Space and a public pleasure ground. This is the one legal and official designation. Please see the links to pages at the side. So why do we have this confusion mess?
All the controversy connected with grazing and fencing and management for conservation stems from the way that the official public open space status was breached by the council in 1999. They fell over themselves to transfer management and then leasing of the land to SWT when trust staff persuaded them they would be able to get lots of cash from the lottery to spend on Blacka and other sites. But, said SWT, we can only get this lovely money if you give the site to us and call it a nature reserve. This was later denied by the Heritage Lottery Fund who said that funds could just as easily be obtained by the council to maintain Blacka. According to HLF, being a nature reserve and being held by a wildlife trust was not an issue: the money was NOT ringfenced. The council as trustees and as a local authority could have got funds from HLF to improve facilities at Blacka themselves!
So who was deceiving whom here? Well the question that needs asking is who gains from the manouevre?
It was necessary to make councillors and the public believe that this money would only become available if the place was called a Nature Reserve and handed over to SWT.
SWT suddenly gets a spanking new property much bigger than any other site for many a mile and its status is deemed to grow in proportion. The council offloads some responsibility and costs. The public who use and value the place as it is find their one remaining open space of any size that is not farmed gets barbed wire and cattle. Winners and losers?
More to follow on this soon.